News

22nd – 26th July: Advanced Accelerator Concepts workshop

Prof. Willingale presents “Unraveling the Direct Laser Acceleration of electron beams” at the 2024 Advanced Accelerator Concepts (AAC) workshop held at Naperville, IL.

11th July: Zap it! camp

The Zap it! camp is an Electrify camp for high-school students. Prof. Willingale presented a lecture on “Plasma Research with ZEUS”. Outreach coordinator Elizabeth Oxford put together plasma demos to help illustrate the concepts to the campers.

9th – 10th July: Extreme Light Workshop

Prof. Willingale presented “The NSF ZEUS laser: A high field user facility” at the DOD sponsored Extreme Light Workshop held at the Ohio State University.

17th June 2024: HEDSS lecture

Prof. Willingale presented a lecture on “Plasma Diagnostics” for the University of Michigan High Energy Density Summer School (HEDSS) 2024. She also helped give the summer school students tours of the ZEUS laser facility!

June 2024: New NSF Funding

Prof. Willingale is the PI for a new National Science Foundation project titled “Measuring Magnetic Field Dynamics Generated by Laser-Driven Electron Beams in Plasma Channels“. The project will support a Graduate Student Research Assistant (GSRA) to perform experiments using the ZEUS laser facility.

14th May 2024: Seminar at PSFC MIT

Prof. Willingale was invited to give a PSFC seminar at MIT.

9th May 2024: Seminar at IST in Lisbon

Prof. Willingale visited her collaborator Marija Vranic and her team at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon Portugal! She gave a seminar titled “Direct Laser Acceleration:Studies of the influence of laser focusing and plasma profile”.

9th May 2024: New Journal of Physics publication

Dr. Hongmei Tang’s paper titled “The influence of laser focusing conditions on the direct laser acceleration of electrons” is published in New Journal of Physics.

16th-18th April 2024: OLUG meeting

Veronica Contreras attends the Omega Laser User Group (OLUG) meeting in person at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, NY. Prof. Willingale attends virtually (she is still teaching!).

22nd March 2024: Physical Review Letters publication

The manuscript “Direct Laser Acceleration in Underdense Plasmas with Multi-PW Lasers: A Path to High-Charge, GeV-Class Electron Bunches” is published in Physical Review Letters.

23rd February 2024: Physics of Plasmas publication

The manuscript “Electron energy gain due to a laser frequency modulation experienced by electron during betatron motion” is published in Physics of Plasmas.

21-22 February 2024: SSAP Symposium

Professor Willingale, Dr. Hongmei Tang, and PhD student Veronica Contreras attended the 2024 Stewardship Science Academic Programs (SSAP) Symposium in Arlington, VA. PhD student I-Lin Yeh from UC San Diego is one of our project’s collaborators and also attended. We made presentations representing our project titled “Direct Laser Acceleration of Electrons for Bright, Directional Radiation Sources”.

February 2024: Journal of Plasma Physics Editorial Board

Prof. Willingale has joined the editorial board of the Journal of Plasma Physics! She looks forward to reading your manuscript submissions.

30th January 2024: NIF and JLF User Group Meeting

Prof. Willingale attended the NIF and JLF User Group Meeting in Livermore CA. Louise is the Chair of the NIF User Group and was really happy with the fantastic agenda, presentation and discussions at the meeting.